Sunday, 7 May 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land. 

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00

COVID-19: Keep in mind that passengers and crew are asked to ensure their own hygiene and safety at all times. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and using a hand sanitiser is advised. 

Report from Eldey: What an epic start to the day! We sailed out with little wind and swell. Not long after leaving we already spotted blows and even some splashing in the distance. We headed in its direction, but stopped on our way for our first humpback whale of the tour. This was a very calm individual swimming around us and showing its fluke when it went down. After a few moments we headed onwards to get closer to those splashes. As we did we saw it was a humpback whale that was pec-slapping! It only stopped to occasionally catch its breath and then it continued! After a lot of pec-slapping it went for a deeper dive and when it came back up - it breached! Not just once but 3 times! Absolutely incredible. We already were very pleased and in awe but it continued to breach 8 more times!! What a dream. It switched back to pec-slapping on occasion but breached a total of 11 times. It is very rare that they breach so often, usually it is just once or twice. There were quite a few boats at this times so we decided to start our return journey back to harbour. As we did we continued looking in its direction and then it tail-slapped! It felt like it was waving goodbye with its fluke. On the way back to Reykjavik we saw one more humpback whale, which showed us its beautiful dark fluke. In total we had a good look at 3 humpback whales, but there were lots of blows surrounding us in the bay. 

- Anna Richter

Report from Eldey: We set our sails towards the vast Atlantic Ocean in fairly good weather. Little wind and even occasional sunshine gave us a beautiful view of the mountains surrounding Faxaflói Bay. After being on the search for some time we spotted a blow in the distance. Mere minutes later another and then two others also appeared on the horizon. Full of excitement we started our approach and after some minutes we had reached the area and were surrounded by at least 4 blowing humpback whales. We admired them all at first but then we decided to follow one single individual, which we followed for quite some time. This whale was surfacing every couple of minutes and gave us a lot of good looks of its fluke. It even came very close to the front of our boat so that we even got splashed a bit by its breath. After some time more boats started to arrive and we decided it was time to leave this individual. As we turned around and made our way further out a surprise whale we had not seen before popped up right next to us and gave us a show by throwing its tail high out of the water. We also followed this athletic whale for a shorter while until it was time to go home. On our way home we however had two more close encounters with two other humpbacks and saw two or three more blows in the distance. In total we had about 4 close encounters and 8 humpback whales in total.What a tour.

Cindy Schwenk

glaucous gull, lesser and great black backed gull, Northern fulmar, Altantic puffin, razorbills, common guillemot, black legged kittiwake, eider duck, black headed gull